Blackbird Chain

This song, with its jangle guitar sound, is one of several tracks on Morning Phase that is steeped in the Californian folk-rock of the 1970s. Beck told NME: "I could have bought the drum machines out, but I really wanted to avoid that."

Beck told Q magazine this is one of the quartet of songs on Morning Phase that "felt like they were the gravitational centre of the record." (The other three are "Waking Light," "Wave" and "Say Goodbye"). He takes pride in their lyrical simplicity. "I think I used to make a lot of my songs are a lot more dense," Beck told Q. "I think that's a typical instinct, starting out. Though I still love lyrics that are dense – I love lyrics that you can get lost in. I feel with a record like this the melodies need to be really pure, and less clutter there is with the words, the better the melodies were."